From the "VIP Club" on the 46th Floor of the
new Shenzhen Stock Exchange, designed by Rem Koolhaas from OMA in
Rotterdam, people look down onto a sterile ideal city.

On the road 255 meters below plow those who haven't
made it (yet) into the dizzying heights of communist
turbo-capitalism: Countless road workers move the red earth from
left to right, guarded by men in military uniforms with green
camouflage patterns, who stand around the new building under small
umbrellas. They make sure that no one gets too close to the new
building.

The vast Plaza at the foot of the 500-million
dollar new Shenzhen Stock Exchange is totally empty. Framed only by
a three-storey podium that cantilevers far from the high-rise stem
with its dark gray grid façade. The price for such acrobatic
tectonics is a rather complex structure whose diagonal bracing
dominates the facades of the lower floors of the new building. The
square grid facade in gray is clad in coated textured
glass.

At the Shenzhen Stock Exchange shares are traded
of approximately 1,500 companies - usually from one government
pocket to another. The stock exchanges of Shanghai and Hong Kong
are still far ahead of Shenzhen in terms of trading volume, but it
does not have to stay that way forever. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange
is designed for growth: For the time being it only uses the lower
ten floors of its new building, the rest is rented out.

Stock exchanges as a building type for people
are long dead - there is no dealer left, who flits from trading
booth to the next or makes the best prices with cryptic calls or
obscure hand signals. In Shenzhen only giant computer servers purr.
More than thirty managers follow the digital market activity on
their monitors. They must get tired a lot - their offices even have
showers and beds.

Shenhzen Stock Exchange. Photo by
Ulf Meyer

The import building is surprisingly well built -
a reversal of previous practice in Koolhaas' office, which has
traditionally been proud to ignore detailing work. Also, almost all
Western architects in China complain about the lousy construction
quality. So, how did Rem do it? The high building standard was made
possible only by the continuous presence of OMA architects on the
site.

The Dutch designers are particularly proud of
the walls made ​​of cast stone that characterize the foyer below
and the Club floor above. Their patterns are reminiscent of Chinese
landscape painting in ink - only on closer inspection do they turn
out to be the motives of price fluctuations of stocks.

The surrealism of the building shape fits its
surrounding city, which has made its artificiality its identity.
Its raison d' être is making money. That it what Chinese president
Deng Xiao Ping wanted in 1979, when he set up China's first
"special economic zone" in Shenzhen. Deng's slogan was "Let in the
West Wind. Wealth is glorious".

The building is supposed to signify the climax
of market forces like a totem pole of capital - but seems rather
like a strange, mysterious and enigmatic flying object. Koolhaas
has assembled two designs of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe into a
"collage": The McCormick Convention Center in Chicago was grafted
onto the stem of the Seagram Building in New York.

Shenhzen Stock Exchange. Photo by
Ulf Meyer

The most important intangible process of a stock
exchange, the virtual speculation, it can not represent. Although
the raised podium is supposed to look like it would held up only by
"speculative euphoria" (Koolhaas). 27,000 tons of steel is required
to create the illusion.High-rise towers like the new Shenzhen Stock
Exchange Building are less an expression of economic market
conditions as of political ambition. Koolhaas himself had drawn
attention to these puzzling phenomena with his contribution at the
documenta art show in Kassel in 1997 called "The Speed ​​of
Shenzhen". Now he has come full circle: The autistic giant
buildings of Shenzhen, standing rather lonely on their sites just
do not find together to form a city. Koolhaas has now added his
architectural legacy to Shenzhen. In five years it will be
considered old.